Lot including: - HEARNE (Samuel). Samuel Hearne's... Lot 25

Lot including: - HEARNE (Samuel). [Samuel Hearne's Voyage from the Prince of Wales' Fort, situated in Hudson Bay to the North Ocean]. [Paris], [Patris], [year VII (1799)]. 2 volumes in one vol. in-8 of lviii-373 pp, [2] ff, 332-xxix-[2] pp. half marbled calf, smooth spine decorated, title page in red marble (period binding). The illustration consists of a large route map, 4 plates and 5 maps. Rare first French edition of this travelogue of a fur trader of the Hudson's Bay Company who went on an exploration in search of the Northwest Passage by river or sea and of copper mines. Nicknamed "the pedestrian of the Great North", Hearne was the first to cross the tundra from Churchill in Hudson Bay between 1770 and 1772. It is thanks to La Pérouse who took Hearne prisoner at the Prince of Wales fort in 1782 that his story has reached us. His notes had been confiscated and finally returned to him against the promise to publish them, which was only done in 1792, a few days before his death. The account of his expedition gives a severe testimony, far from the myth of the "good savage", about the customs of the Indians living in the Canadian Great North. Hearne relates the Bloody Falls massacre and declares himself shocked by the general lack of moral sense of the Indians, their attitude towards women (including their own), as well as by their improvidence and the waste of game. - [Russia - KRASCHENINNIKOV (Étienne-Petrovitch)]. History of Kamtschatka, the Kurilski Islands, and the neighboring regions, published in Petersburg, in Russian language, by order of His Imperial Majesty. ... Translated by Mr. E*** [Eidous]. Volume one. Lyon, Duplain, 1767. 1 vol. (of 2) paperback, dust jacket. First edition of the French translation. Incomplete with the second volume.